Help an old veteran to finally finish this game

Hi,

Odd story...

My Gothic adventure started with part 2. When I discovered it I cursed myself for not playing the original when it came out, I somehow could never find the spare time to pick it up. I played G2 to death and I mean that. It was the only game for at least 6 months originally and then came back to it a few more times and finished it countless times. The soundtrack was amazing and the quests seemed really balanced giving me the challenge I always wanted from a fantasy game. Stage Enter Gothic3... When I first got this game I played vanilla unpatched and funny enough i did not get any bugs until I finished Myrtana and got my savegames corrupted. That made me quit originally. Going back in time now and reading about all these bugs I have no idea how I was able to play so long without having issues, amazing. Second time was with an early community patch and I made it as far as Nordmar but I lost interest somehow, not sure why. Now, all these years later I picked it up again and I cannot play it. I'm hit with a freezing bug ingame that seems to happen in specific areas, ie near vengard and also in the cave complex at Reddock. What I have to do in these areas is edge very slowly and not make sudden camera movements, it will get very choppy and freeze for a few seconds but it will eventually come free. If I don't do that it can permanently freeze. The second bug is the game crashing during loading a savegame with a message "Genome game system has stopped working". This usually happens after a few times reloading but sometimes it can happen during the first load. I have searched around for 2 days trying to find a solution to this and so far I did not find one. I tried many things relating to memory but most threads are 6-4 years old on this and it seems this problem has been solved.

I get stuttering, really bad stuttering all over the place but especially when entering new areas. Other than that the game runs at 60-90fps. To be honest I don't remember it running so badly when I was playing before. But like it is with all past loves, I might be biased. I have already liberated Cape Dun so I have played a bit, I was wondering if anyone has any ideas and can help me trying something on the version I am currently playing and any help would be really appreciated.

After about 10 reinstalls and trial and error I am almost certain in is the texture pack from the questpacket. That and me using the gametool to increase draw distance probably put too much weight and the game could not handle it. Obviously the code is rubbish but I already knew that. The one thing that actually does get to me is the draw distance, the game looks really poor with all the mountains ect just popping out especially the NPCs. But other than that I somehow buy into the charm that is gothic and even part 3 has got a huge amount of it.

I only use the increased draw distance from the quest pack and so far the game seems to be stable on all high settings.

I focus much more on gameplay and storyline than graphics. Sure I enjoy the view in G3 on high detail but if I wanted to just enjoy the view I'd rather travel somewhere in real world cause nothing beats RL graphics

I prefer playing a mediocre looking game without lagging to setting everything to ultra high and have a slideshow instead of a game. And G3 is still pretty darn nice on med detail, TBH I find all the graphic improvements last couple of years redundant and miniscule.

I focus much more on gameplay and storyline than graphics. Sure I enjoy the view in G3 on high detail but if I wanted to just enjoy the view I'd rather travel somewhere in real world cause nothing beats RL graphics

I prefer playing a mediocre looking game without lagging to setting everything to ultra high and have a slideshow instead of a game. And G3 is still pretty darn nice on med detail, TBH I find all the graphic improvements last couple of years redundant and miniscule.

If more people thought that way, we'd have much better games. Graphics are the easy part but kill the industry by requiring more and more powerful PCs plus, less time is spent on a good AI. The difficulty of the AI is the real reason for MMP games in my opinion; people take the place of it but at the cost of so many game killers playing.

Guys, lets not kid ourselves... G3 looks fairly decent even for its 8 year old life, but what does kill it somewhat is the draw distance. The game is written so poorly that it takes a lot of effort to actually enjoy the game, effort that will not be given if not a Gothic enthusiast. It took me hours upon hours to figure out some of the problems. The solution above worked but later on in the game it started getting worse, I had memory related CTDs while playing and teleporting. I ended up fiddling with my registry and other things in order to keep on playing. Something I have not done for any game since forever, certainly not for and 8 year old game which has had so many updates.

A lot of people always complained about the same things:

Voice acting: I always liked it, even though all reviews hated it and said how amateurish it is. There's just something classic in the way people call each other "dirty swine" or "filthy snappers" etc.

Bugs and poor optimization: That's pretty hard to get over. This game is addicted to ram it shoots it straight into the vain, shags it and never calls back. Even after so many official patches and releases. I can play Witcher 2 on High detail with no issues and not G3 and that says a lot.

Misc bugs, glitches, combat: Nothing game breaking for me and most are just part of Gothic.

When I played Risen I almost thought that this is pretty much what G3 should have been like. Then came Risen 2 and that was the first real time I was disappointed...

Heh, my first playthrough of G3 with the 1.60 patch was horrid; the worst being that ALL of my saves getting corrupted if the game ever crashed.

With 1.74, G3 lags a little bit more than usual, and lags horribly in battle involving anything more than me and 5-6 NPCs. But that's okay. At least it's not just a freaking clickfest anymore. With the advanced AI, you have to REALLY think before you attack an enemy. You have to study their moves to know exactly when to parry and when to counter. Also, the monsters don't stunlock you to death. But to make it harder, they also ignore flinching after several blows in quick succession.

Hardest thing for me to get over in G3 are poor animations, combat, voice acting(there are what, 4-5 voice actors?) and the fact almost every character looks the same and has the same face, there is no diversity like in G1 and 2 same goes for voice acting.

BTW did anyone notice that one voice actor with an annoying, screechy old man voice? He cracks me up every time. F.e. Jack the tower guard from behind Ardea and Rakus the fire mage for Okara have that voice and it's even funnier when you attack them they scream like scavengers

Hardest thing for me to get over in G3 are poor animations, combat, voice acting(there are what, 4-5 voice actors?) and the fact almost every character looks the same and has the same face, there is no diversity like in G1 and 2 same goes for voice acting.

BTW did anyone notice that one voice actor with an annoying, screechy old man voice? He cracks me up every time. F.e. Jack the tower guard from behind Ardea and Rakus the fire mage for Okara have that voice and it's even funnier when you attack them they scream like scavengers

Oh! Ooh, ooh, oh! (What were they thinking!). And Laras; from a bad ass rogue who teaches you how to fight to a girly boy. How I hate that voice in III!

Yeah, the variety isn't that great; especially considering that the gameworld is so big. Still, it doesn't bother me that much because I do not pay that much attention to such details, I think my brain has moved past the point of fuck giving lol. I prefer isometric RPG games like Arcanum, Fallout so that is not so important to me. Also, one of the voice actors has always been a particular favourite of mine, first time I heard this actor was in Diablo, he was Deckard Cain. However, I can never get over the PCs death scream as his oddly limp body flies threw the air. It's so exaggerated it feels like a weird shouting burst love doll that flew few feet in the air. They could have just used Wilhelm to do the scream.

The other question is (perhaps it's been answered somewhere I dunno, never was part of the community) what ever happened with women in this game? I mean, I don't recall a single one in either GII or GIII, the mod adds them but originally they do not exist. This is bizzare on many levels. One can even try to accuse of sexism lol. I have almost finished Myrtana and already made some headway into Varant. It's been days and I'm only just about halfway through the game.

Gothic 1 - A prisoner colony. Need I explain more?
Gothic 2 - There was a fair amount of women there, I don't see the problem.
Gothic 3 - I'm guessing they were just lazy here and simply didn't take their time with making the atmosphere better. Gothic 3 vanilla is like a beta version compared to Gothic with CP, QP and CM anyway.

And Cassia in Gothic 2 is pretty damn hard to beat. But at least she is dexterity oriented and has a light Master Sword, you may not like what I'm about to say but I think it's ridiculous and unrealistic that a 55-60kg girl goes around swinging steel 2 handers like they're made out of plastic.

Speaking of that, isn't it odd how somebody like Nameless can kill orcs? I mean Orcs in G1 and 2 are obviously ~200kg and about as strong as gorillas yet Nameless can take out like 10 of them and more by the end of Gothic 2 .

Gothic 1 - A prisoner colony. Need I explain more?
Gothic 2 - There was a fair amount of women there, I don't see the problem.
Gothic 3 - I'm guessing they were just lazy here and simply didn't take their time with making the atmosphere better. Gothic 3 vanilla is like a beta version compared to Gothic with CP, QP and CM anyway.

And Cassia in Gothic 2 is pretty damn hard to beat. But at least she is dexterity oriented and has a light Master Sword, you may not like what I'm about to say but I think it's ridiculous and unrealistic that a 55-60kg girl goes around swinging steel 2 handers like they're made out of plastic.

Speaking of that, isn't it odd how somebody like Nameless can kill orcs? I mean Orcs in G1 and 2 are obviously ~200kg and about as strong as gorillas yet Nameless can take out like 10 of them and more by the end of Gothic 2 .

These kind of things always bothered me in games.

That's because numbers don't count - only one, two, maybe three at a time (I've been playing G-III where one sets the number that5 attacks you with 1.75.14 - can't remember how it worked in I/II) attack you while the others watch. Plus, while all hell breaks loose, nearby NPCs don't notice. In G-III, a fight within a clan village with the orcs draws only the nearest fighters (guess the rest are deaf?). An unfortunate truth is that people get upset if they have to think too hard - they want to hack and slash their way through every opponent - so games designers are very reluctant to add realism because it gets too hard for many people who then don't buy it or write bad reviews. I'd love to see wolves that only fought if cornered and who could out run you if you ran (of course, AI tracking would have to be a lot better and tree climbing allowed ). I think the most fun I had was trying to be a mage in G-II - I couldn't fight so I HAD to think hard of alternate ways of winning.

At the risk of someone hiring a hitman on me, I think PB is a weak team in some respects. Their broad vision and imagination can't be beat but I think they lack the technical know how with the result of terrible AI tracking, too short of attention and reaction spans, etc.